Sixteen students awarded Gillings Merit Scholarships
The awardees are Avner Halevy (biostatistics), Erline Miller (epidemiology), Julian Oliver and Nicole Bailey (environmental sciences and engineering), May Chen and Cristina Leos (health behavior), Carolina Carnevale, Camille Grant, Jamaul Stephens and Omotomike Ogunmumiju (health policy and management), Lorenzo Hopper (maternal and child health), Alberto Vargas (nutrition), and Vishal Rao, Yemeng Lu, Kathryn McKenney and Brittany White (Public Health Leadership Program). Departmental committees select the recipients.
This year’s scholars have a wide range of interests – from developing policy that will improve the practice of medicine (Ogunwumiju), to hospital administration (Grant), to improving drinking water quality (Bailey), to investigating the human genome, in the hope of better understanding the genetic basis of disease (Halevy).
“The Gillings Merit Scholarship,” said Meredith Webb, one of last year’s awardees, “enabled me, as an executive master’s student in health policy and management, to continue to work and develop my professional experience as a policy analyst at the CDC while earning my Master of Healthcare Administration at the Gillings School. [Because I have been] able to enhance my learning experiences in both the workplace and academics, I foresee working as a leader in health policy implementation upon completion of my studies.”
Julie MacMillan, MPH, director of Research and Innovation Solutions, the office that administers the scholarships, said the students’ skills and dedication were impressive.
“We’re so lucky to have them at the School,” MacMillan said.
